Posted
by
Soulskill
on Wednesday December 09, 2009 @04:36AM
from the new-and-shiny dept.

ajs writes "World of Warcraft'sWrath of the Lich King expansion was staggered into 4 phases. The fourth and final phase, patch 3.3, was released on Tuesday. This patch is significant in that it will be the first introduction of one of the most anticipated new features in the game since PvP arenas: the cross-realmrandom dungeon, as well as the release of new end-game dungeons for 5, 10 and 25-player groups. The patch notes have been posted, and so has a trailer. The ultimate fight against the expansion's antagonist, the Lich King a.k.a. Arthas, will be gated as each of the four wings of the final dungeon are opened in turn — a process that may take several months. The next major patch after 3.3 (presumably 4.0) will be the release of Cataclysm, the next expansion."

Yep, and it also brings a shitload of bugs that they KNEW about on the PTR. They went live with the patch anyway. The new graphical backends are causing issues left and right. I can say that in OS X, my framerates have plummeted (and I'm on a 3.8ghz i7 Hackintosh with a GTX 285), VSync no longer works at all, and the command key does not work in game. This stuff was well known on the PTR and they went live with it anyway. It's fucking unbelievable.

When I first started playing WoW there wasn't any of this fancy "meeting stones" or "looking for group". If you wanted to get people together to play you shouted into random channels in Ironforge. No cross realm ques for battlegrounds and there were no PVP rewards, and we liked it! If you wanted a horse, you saved your money from level one and didn't even THINK of buying anything until you had it, and if you wanted something other than a horse TOO BAD. Everything was better then. Loot meant something and everyone in your group looked out for you and made sure the right people got the right gear. Back in my day Paladins were ineffective but unkillable, shamans were GODS and if you wanted to leave Tarren Mill you WALKED because the flightmaster was DEAD. You think it's hard now? Imagine running MC and hoofing it back to your body in Blackrock, uphill both ways!